Had Eren died in Ep5 and stayed dead. It would have been a brilliant bit of misdirection. They set this guy up as the protagonist while also establishing the other characters, then the first battle comes along and they're like, "Nope, titans don't give a shit if you swear revenge through gritted teeth every morning before breakfast. No plot armour for you. You really are just chaff for the mill, like everyone else." Then the story could have followed the much more compelling characters of Mikasa and Armin, both of whom would be crazy motivated by Eren's death. And the audience would have been on the same page since they were expecting this guy to be the hero.

But nope. Superpowers!

This anime is a piece of shit. I'm sick of listening to that whiny pussy Eren cry about not being able to save his comrades when he can. All he's done is get eaten. Twice. Bitch. Cry. And get rescued by Mikasa. Tell this faggot to shut the fuck up and get in the titan already.

My eyes shot open in surprise when Eren got eaten and I was expecting a super dark action horror manga showing that the monster needn't just be some creature slinking in the shadows, but could be the unstoppable approach of a near impossible to stop behemoth.

I was thinking that Armin would've manned the fuck up and have taken the place as MC and tried to kill the titans in Eren's place, but unfortunately we got UAREBIDANS. I'm in it just to see how broken Eren is going to get now, but it's definitely not what I wanted or expected from the series.

TL;DR ahead story ahead: I backup a lot of anime, a lot of it is shit that I never even plan on watching ever again for the purpose of possibly giving it to others or making a gif, and into the trash this show went. There is nothing of value for this show, and I've been likened to a hoarder.

I don't think Armin and Mikasa would have been enough to carry the plot on their own. And killing Eren would just kill Mikasa's dedication to live and way too much time would have to be spent focusing on her moping and learning to get over it (that's if she didn't kill herself). And if I recall correctly it was established that titans don't give a shit and yelling your motivations still got your ass handed to you. Even when Eren powered up, he was still utterly useless for like, ever. I haven't read the manga in half a year but I can't actually remember him doing anything noteworthy other than not dying and killing a slew of titans the first time he transformed.

>>101067067
But right before she went through with it she had an epiphany and realized that she wanted to live on even if Eren couldn't be with her. That moment was the most character development she's received in the entire series. And then Eren pops out of nowhere and reverts it all so she's back to being completely dependent.

I also thought that Eren coming back with superpowers was bullshit. But titan shifting does become a compelling part of the plot later. Well, actually, Eren's ability never becomes that interesting. It's the others.

The first time I read Shingeki no Kyojin was during a storytime dump. The first thread (and consequently the first volume) had already fallen off the board, so I was stuck with starting from the second volume. Let me tell you, starting from the second volume gave me vastly different expectations of what the series was going to be then starting from the first. For starters, I thought Mikasa was the protagonist. I had no idea who Eren was and thought the titan he'd become was just a deranged deviant that turned on its own kind. I thought the whole comic was gonna be the stoic, serious action girl teaming up with the berserking monster for the sake of the humanity in a weird kind of beauty and the beast riff, only for the deviant titan to dissolve into...some guy? Oh wow, what is even going on. Then I went back and read the first volume and all that kinda faded away.

Shingeki's okay, but I still kinda miss my version, where it was 100% humans against 100% monsters with just one crazy boxing monster on their side. I also still think Mikasa would make a better protagonist.

>>101066928
SnK has some of the most wasted potential I have ever seen. Also what especially pisses me off about it is how almost every character, even background characters, is given gruesome, overly drawn out death scenes to the point of becoming routine. Isayama needs to learn that shit like that has no effect unless you actually gave enough depth and development to those characters to make us care about them before he killed them off. It's what separates him from Gen Urobuchi and George R.R. Martin.